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Others saw Minnie as a masochist who would put up with just about anything for her children’s sake and to avoid a society scandal.
    The truth, in fact, was much simpler. Somewhere, buried very deep in both their hearts, beneath the hatred, the bitterness, and all the many betrayals—a tiny fragment of love survived.

CHAPTER TWO
    From Duke’s perspective, Caroline’s arrival was a huge success.
    By eight o’clock the house was looking immaculate. Enormous vases of pink and white lilies jostled for position on the delicate Louis XV walnut tables littering the hacienda’s enormous marble entrance hall. Real log fires crackled in the dining room and drawing room (or “den” as Duke embarrassingly insisted on calling it, despite its palatial proportions), and a festive smell of pine mingled with the sweet, heady scent of the flowers. Two assistants had been hired to help Conchita, the McMahons’ cook, ensure that the lobster bisque, monkfish casserole, and lemon syllabub were cooked to perfection, much to that formidable Mexican matron’s fury. Minnie hated to upset Conchita, but it was imperative that tonight’s meal was beyond reproach.
    Pete McMahon arrived home from work at six. Although more physically attractive than his younger sister, Pete was no heartthrob and, like Laurie, bore very little resemblance to either of his parents. To begin with, he was ginger-haired, although with age his coloring had mercifully faded from the carroty orange of his childhood to a nondescript sandy color, prematurely flecked with gray. He had his mother’s pale complexion, but while Minnie’s skin was luminous and pure, Pete looked permanently pasty and ill and had a tendency toward excessive sweating. He was well built, despite being short and physically lazy, and there was a certain bulldog strength about him that some women found attractive. Nevertheless, he generally made the worst of his looks, such as they were, thanks to a tragic penchant for ill-fitting suits as well as the scowl of resentment that hung almost permanently over his otherwise regular features.
    Today he was looking even more bad-tempered than usual. What a shitty, shitty day it had been. His long-anticipated meeting with the producer Mort Hanssen had turned out to be a complete waste of time. Pete aspired to produce himself, and had had a couple of vanity credits on some half-decent low-budget pictures. But Mort, like everybody else in Hollywood, clearly still viewed him as Duke McMahon’s kid. The fact that at the age of thirty he still lived under his father’s roof obviously did nothing to improve his credibility. Man, he really had to do something about that, take the bull by the horns.
    He and Claire, his quiet, shy new wife, remained largely financially dependent on Duke, living in a suite of rooms in the south wing of the main house. Although he had never shown even the most glancing interest in either of his two children, Duke was insistent that his entire extended family should remain living at Hancock Park. Having grown up the youngest of seven children in a vast Irish tribe, sleeping two or three to a bed, Duke liked big families. He also had a nearly pathological fear of being alone.
    For Pete, living on the estate was like fucking torture. No privacy. No escape. After the day he’d had today, the last thing he needed was to play welcoming committee for some bimbo of his father’s.
    Walking into the drawing room, he watched Minnie as she darted from kitchen to drawing room, tasting the soup or plumping up the already perfect overstuffed cushions. His heart lurched for her. He felt a sickening combination of love, sympathy, and an agonizing, impotent rage. Somehow his mother had made it a matter of
pride
to have the house looking wonderful for that little bitch. As if the fucking priest were coming over for Thanksgiving or something. Jesus. Why couldn’t she just once, just
once
stand up to him?
    But Pete knew, probably better than anybody,